


TSS Fanworks Collective October Server Challenge

by Odaigahara



Series: discord, i'm howling at the moon [4]
Category: Sanders Sides (Web Series)
Genre: Afterlife, Anxiety, Creativity Split (Sanders Sides), Crossover, Drabble Collection, Gen, Grim Reapers, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Kid Fic, Personality Swap, Prompt Fill
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-09
Updated: 2020-10-22
Packaged: 2021-03-08 00:54:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 6,091
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26906935
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Odaigahara/pseuds/Odaigahara
Summary: Prompt fills for the Discord's October Server Challenge!*Ch.7: (Day 16) The Light Sides don’t remember, but the Dark Sides do.*Janus was incredibly sick when they came; he remembers that much, through the haze of years
Relationships: Anxiety | Virgil Sanders & Deceit | Janus Sanders, Anxiety | Virgil Sanders & Thomas Sanders
Series: discord, i'm howling at the moon [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1884838
Comments: 40
Kudos: 83
Collections: Thomas Fucking Dies





	1. Day 1: grim reaper

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Remus is stuck. He gets a visitor.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TW's at end notes

The air is crisp and thin, low enough on oxygen to get Remus’s blood pumping, lungs working harder to compensate. He hangs his legs over the edge and admires the view, imagines all the ways he could slip and crash hundreds of feet below, splattered into bloody chunks like a watermelon that rolled out of a car trunk. He breathes in and out, enjoying the feeling of his lungs expanding, and wonders what will come to eat him once he’s dead, high on the neglected cliffside.

His fingers shoot sharp agony up his arm when he moves them. They’re all snapped bones and pulp now; he smashed them on the rock when he fell and failed to catch himself, and when he did stop moving they were already bashed to bits. Now he’s on a ledge too low to climb up and too high to climb down, after free climbing without telling anyone where he was going because he forgot. It’s funny. If Remus saw a story like this on the news, he’d laugh.

“Talk about a way to die,” he says brightly, staring up at the dazzling sun. If he’s gonna die, he doesn’t feel like protecting his eyesight or whatever his and Roman’s parents always told them when Remus did something that’d hurt him later. He wants to take the unimaginable heat and light in, let it burn him raw and peeling, radiation cooking him from the inside out. “You wanna bet I freeze before I get so thirsty I try to drink my own blood?”

His blood is smeared all over the thin ledge, dripping down the sides of the cliff. The ledge is so thin that his entire thighs hang off, balance so precarious that a little gust of wind could send him down like a baby rocking in a treetop. His life is on a tightrope so thin it’ll snap at any second, never mind how much he balances. The moment that he dies will feel exactly the same as this one.

“Or an eagle could come and drag me off the side like they do with goats,” he continues, wincing when he jostles his hand by accident. “Or, ooh, better yet, they could come up here and tear me open and eat my intestines nice and slow, slurp ‘em down like Gogurt tubes! I could be spreadeagled up here with all my blood soaking down below to show where I am. That’ll give Roman a shock when he turns on the news! Right next to the war crimes of the day. You’ve seen war crimes, right? Gotten all nice and close and juicy with ‘em? Gotten to know them _Biblically?”_

At that the shape in the corner of his vision moves, impossibly crammed onto the ledge next to him and massless as a patch of shade. “If you’re asking if I’ve had sex with war crimes,” the familiar voice rasps, “the answer is no, and also, what the fuck.”

“Yeah, I get that a lot,” Remus says, kicking out his feet. The thing jolts in his periphery at that, flickering closer, but Remus doesn’t lose his balance or crack his skull open like an egg. Too bad. “Have I seen you before?”

A silence. “Yeah,” the voice says, quieter. “You were twelve. And fifteen. And sixteen, twice, and twenty, _also_ twice, and have you considered not being a reckless moron for one day?”

“Bitch, I don’t even have one day,” Remus scoffs. “Why bother being careful now? I’m eight seconds from making like Icarus and eating major shit down on those rocks.”

“If you don’t manage to wedge yourself here overnight and freeze, yeah,” the shade agrees, and shifts even closer, a patch of _nothing-there_ behind his shoulder. “Or die of thirst in a couple of days, or get hypothermia if it rains, or get stung by a scorpion or whatever.”

“Are there scorpions here?” Remus asks, brightening.

“How should I know?” If the shade had shoulders, they would be up around its ears. “Don’t ask me that, it stresses me out. It’s not my department.”

“I bet there could be spiders,” Remus says optimistically. “Maybe I’m sitting on a nest right now, and there’s a huge egg sac behind me, and any second they’ll hatch and I’ll get to be their first meal! They can nest in my lungs.”

“There’s no egg sac,” the shade says. “I checked.” It shrinks into itself a little, not in a way Remus could see but one he could feel. “Sorry.”

“Eh, who gives a fuck.” Remus looks down, enjoying the rush of vertigo. There’s a tightness in his chest, a clamminess under his skin like he’s already dead, and he hates it but it won’t give up and go away. His hand is fucked, and he can’t get down, and even while he’s distracting himself the wound pulses with his heartbeat, pain drumming against his thoughts. “I wonder if anyone’ll miss me. Roman might, but he’s a wimp so who gives a shit. He’ll be fine.”

“Don’t you have friends? Or parents?”

“They’re Roman’s friends,” Remus says. “How long’s it take to die of exposure? Think I should just jump?”

“You might still be rescued,” the shade says. “If you jump, that’s, uh, gonna be a lot less likely all of a sudden.”

“Heh, yeah. But it’s gonna get boring up here, if I’m stuck till I die. I might start crying and shit. Might have to piss over the side.” He resists, with great effort, the urge to wriggle in place. “’S weird, but I never thought I’d die alone. Figured someone’d shoot me or I’d OD in front of Roman or something. Something where the drama matters. I had a whole speech ready and everything.”

“Sucks.” Remus hums his agreement, chest pulling tighter and tighter like a bone caught in a vise, and the thing that isn’t there says, “I’ll be here.”

“You’re not anything, though. You’re probably not even real, I’ve had hallucinations before.”

“I’ll be here,” the shade repeats, and settles its nonexistent weight beside him, a lack-of-silhouette against the rock and horizon. “You can give your speech to me.”

Remus tilts his head. “It’s full of weird sex stories,” he says, and the shade doesn’t move. “And blood, and parodies of every poem Roman’s written since third grade. Autocannibalism comes up three times! Also, there’s footnotes.”

“I’ll be here,” the shade says again. “And then neither of us will be.”

“Then I guess I’d better get started, huh,” Remus says, but he doesn’t speak for a long moment after, just stares over the side at the toothpick trees below.

The shade waits, the most patient audience he’s ever had. He wonders if talking long enough can make it leave, too, and if it would save him if it did.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TW: impending character death, graphic depiction of injury


	2. Day 2: Thomas wakes to find something missing

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Thomas is lucky Virgil let him put on shoes before they left.

The neighbors’ cars are all in their driveways, and their outdoor lights flicker on as Thomas rushes past, motion sensors catching on his frantic half-jog. He wants to be walking slower, but Virgil has his arm in a death grip. If he didn’t know for sure that his Anxiety is imaginary, he’d think he was getting bruises.

“We have to go,” he’s saying, and Thomas would call it babbling if it weren’t for the echoing undertone, the subvocal growl that Virgil doesn’t seem to know how to turn off. He’s pale and jittery, and it’s making the hairs stand up on the back of Thomas’s neck. “Now, Thomas, go _faster_ we have to go _now_ –”

“Why?” Thomas demands, trying to twist and look back at his house, door left wide open. Virgil didn’t even let him stop to close it, much less lock it. Thomas was lucky he’d been able to pull on his shoes. “Virgil, this isn’t like you. If you’re really worried about something–”

“Oh, I am so far fucking past worried,” Virgil says, and stops to gesture sharply at the houses around them. “You know why?”

“No!” Thomas says, even as a sick feeling creeps over him, things he’s been ignoring rising up like bloated corpses at sea. Thanks for that one, Remus. “I don’t– it’s six in the morning! The sun isn’t even out yet! Why are we out here?”

“Take a guess,” Virgil snaps, and Thomas says, weak, “That doesn’t _have_ to mean anything. It’s just a bad feeling, that’s all.”

“A bad feeling that had you sleepwalking,” Virgil says, eyes widening in derision. “That had us trying to hold you back, that’s made it so none of your neighbors are walking their dogs or starting their cars or, I don’t know, opening their blinds? A bad feeling that cut the power for the whole neighborhood and took out cell service with it?”

“All of those have reasonable explanations,” Thomas protests. “There could have been a bad storm, or– if something’s really wrong, I have to call my family. I have to call my _friends–”_

“You have to get _out_ ,” Virgil snarls. “The rest can wait.”

He yanks Thomas’s arm, and Thomas snaps, fed up, “Why are you the only one out here?”

“Because–” Virgil’s hand twitches, and he scowls at it. “It’s not gone,” he grits out, and Thomas’s chest goes cold, anxiety prickling over him in nauseous waves. “Whatever it is, it’s still there, it’s still pushing you, we just– aren’t letting it. I’m the one you’re falling back on.”

“Oh.” Thomas suddenly finds it hard to breathe. “So we’re running because…?”

“We don’t know if someone’s coming to check for stragglers,” Virgil says, and Thomas forces himself to nod. That makes sense. In a post-apocalyptic, alien invasion, extinction of the human race way, sure, but it makes sense. Fight or Flight is telling him to do something, so he’s doing something.

But oh, god, his parents, his brothers, Joan and Talyn and Terrence and, and _everyone–_

“Can you guys tell where it was pushing me?” Thomas manages, and Virgil tenses, staring at him. “If everyone else is there– Virgil, I can’t just leave them.”

Virgil looks like he wants to snarl a protest, but something in Thomas’s expression must change his mind; he slumps, rubbing a hand over his face, and says, “Can we at least find a place to hide first? So you don’t immediately die?”

“I’m good with not immediately dying,” Thomas says, and Virgil relaxes, just a little.

The streetlights click off, leaving them in the whitish light of really early morning. The highway in the distance is silent. Birds chatter in the trees, each chirp louder than a gunshot, and Virgil winces at each one.

The houses stay unmoving, some doors ajar, some windows open with their screens popped onto the grass outside. Someone’s dog barks, high and frantic.

Thomas’s phone isn’t working. The TV isn’t receiving a signal, his WiFi was down when he checked, and his neighborhood is a ghost town, abandoned like a city in range of a reactor meltdown.

The urge strikes to pull Virgil closer, twist their fingers together, and his Anxiety lets him do it, watching him warily. “We seriously have to go,” he reminds, with that same terrible echo in his voice, the reverberation that means he’s putting all he has into making Thomas go his way. “No dilly-dallying, I mean _right now_.”

Thomas nods, letting Virgil pull him along, and tries to quash the sudden, shivery feeling that he’s the only person left in the world.


	3. Day 8: Two sides switch functions for the day

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Virgil and Janus accidentally switch functions. This is fine.

“This is normal,” Virgil says, and makes a face. “I mean, this doesn’t feel weird at all. It’s all great and I’m comfortable with it and would like to stay like this forev– what the _fuck_ , Janus, how do you deal with this?”

“Focus, mostly,” Janus says, feeling out the lack of twist in his words. It’s something like losing a joint, or perhaps gaining an extra one: not necessarily good or bad, but _different_. His sentences bend wrong when he speaks. Like everything else has been doing this past hour, the thought fills him with dread. “It’s easier if you’re comfortable. Incidentally, have I mentioned that you look incredibly strange with so many eyes?”

“Not at all,” Virgil says, glowering. There are tiny black eyes scattered above his cheeks, mostly hidden by his eyeshadow; they blink and watch Janus, more calculating than the rest of Virgil. “Also, I’m _not_ feeling the sudden need to trick you and/or tie you up and stick you to the wall. Just so you know.”

“If you do that, I’ll definitely bite,” Janus warns, because Virgil’s spider instincts may have contorted to match his new function, but Janus’s snake ones have done the same. He feels like a rattlesnake or copperhead, coiled in the grass and tensed for a larger animal’s approach. He wants to warn and rattle and say _I’m a danger, don’t even look at me,_ and if that fails he wants to kill the threat before it can kill him. “Did I mention I have venom?”

“I don’t have venom, you’re totally special,” Virgil says with a roll of his eyes, then grits his teeth and amends, “I _have_ venom. You’re _not_ special.”

“Now you’re getting it.” One of Janus’s hands reaches up to feel the scales on his face, other five twitching and clutching uncertainly around him. As soon as he and Virgil switched functions, they came out and refused to disappear.

It was such a stupid fistfight, too, in _Remus’s_ room of all places, which Janus doubts will do the cuts and bruises any favors, and what if his wounds are infected already? What if Virgil’s are? How will he _deal_ with that?

He’ll get Logan, perhaps. Or Patton, or even Remus to see if he wants the infection for himself. Yes, that might work.

The plan calms him, bringing the trembling in his hands down to a minimum. He imagines the changed scales on his face shifting back to gray from their noxious black, as Virgil says they’ve been doing the whole time, and suppresses a shiver.

“This _isn’t_ your fault, you know,” Virgil says.

“What, because I was accepted? Believe it or not, Virgil, but I do still _talk_ to Remus–”

“You had to be in his room when you knew I was coming?”

“I was there to find my Halloween costume,” Janus snaps, “and if I recall correctly, _you_ threw the first punch.”

“After you _didn’t_ shove me!”

“After you started _yelling–”_ Janus snarls, but when Virgil snarls back the sound catches at his spine and makes him freeze, suddenly certain that Virgil will bite him, or tie him up and leave him to starve, and who will look out for Thomas’s interests _then–_

“Shit,” Virgil says, glare faltering. “Janus, we’re not arguing. I’m about to attack you again, it’s not like you just said you’d bite me if I did.” He makes another face at that, likely trying to puzzle out what exactly he just said, and Janus manages to get his heartbeat to slow.

He’s having to think like he’s trapped in Virgil’s room. It isn’t as effective as he hoped– he’s lacking the instinct to mislead that always surges up when he’s nervous– but the techniques are the same.

Breathe in, hold, breathe out. Virgil gives up thinking and says, “This isn’t really weird.” He’s silent after that, for so long that Janus thinks their conversation is over, and then he adds, tentative, “Do you think this would have happened if– if we weren’t fighting? If I still hung out with you guys?”

“I’m surprised you’re letting yourself consider that,” Janus says, and the cold regret is so much sharper as Anxiety, he doesn’t know how Virgil ever lived with it.

Virgil shrugs. “It feels worse to think of it like this. The way we’ve all been getting along _perfectly_ recently…”

Janus’s heart sinks. He would have preferred not to be reminded of the discord in the Mindscape– of Roman’s self-esteem issues, Logan’s seclusion, Patton’s depression and Remus’s dejected fury– but now that he _has_ been, all his discarded ideas for fixing it rush back into place.

Logan is angry at everyone, especially Patton and Roman. Roman is angry at Janus and Patton. Virgil is angry at Janus, Remus at everyone and Thomas, Patton at himself, and they’re all so wrapped up in their own problems that they can’t come to a compromise, can barely even bring themselves to talk.

Janus hasn’t known how to fix it. He was accepted so _recently_ , and he can’t afford to be cast back into the Dark again. Thomas listens so much better now that Janus has a seat at the table. It’s much easier to argue his points when he’s not being scorned or having to fight for the spotlight at every opportunity, and getting Thomas to listen to him means he _has_ to argue, first. Deception takes thought.

If he _could_ have played the villain, though. If he went all out, made himself the monster of every story, forced all the other Sides to work together to keep him away and influenced Thomas from the shadows– if he could get them to accept Remus, if only as a last resort to defend against Janus–

They would be safe. They could all be together if he kept them that way, which would mean they would work better for Thomas, would steer him from danger and towards security. Even if he caught them, he could lock them somewhere harmless and keep them there so nothing in the Mindscape could touch them. They could hate him and love each other and never be hurt again, never have time for stupid arguments. Janus could fix things.

He could fix things like _this_. Anxiety doesn’t need to be accepted to work. He could scare Thomas all he needs, frighten the other Sides half to death, and his job wouldn’t be in jeopardy. Virgil might hate being seen as the villain, but Janus is used to it. He can revel in it.

And he can’t _stand_ the thought of this state of affairs continuing, toxic and stressful and _bad and **wrong–**_

“Janus?” Virgil asks, staring at him. Janus meets his many-eyed gaze, repressing the urge to flinch away. “You doing okay?”

It’s a reluctant question. Janus can’t tell if it’s genuine. He doesn’t care that he can’t tell, either, which seems like it should feel strange.

“I don’t know how you live with this,” he says.

“It’s not stressful,” Virgil agrees, but there’s a suspicion about him now, darkening his edges with spider legs half-formed from shadow. If Janus squints, he can see their chitinous outlines at Virgil’s back. “What were you thinking about just now?”

“Monsters,” Janus says, and touches his cheek again. Perhaps the scales have turned back to black. He wishes he had a mirror to know for sure. “The change in my appearance is bothering me.”

Virgil relaxes. “Same,” he says with some difficulty. “I don’t– I _do_ think that we should go get Remus to see if he can change us back.”

Virgil may have the lie sense now, but Janus has lived with it for over thirty years. “That might be a good idea,” he says, perfectly noncommittal even as it implies agreement, and Virgil nods, looking determined. “I think I’ll go find a mirror first, though. I’m curious what my scales are doing.”

“Try to stray too far,” Virgil warns, not half as vigilant as usual, and Janus feels a flicker of triumph. “I’m totally interested in staying like this forever.”

“Of course,” Janus says, and sinks out before Virgil can decide his behavior is suspicious. He didn’t lie; he does intend to look into a mirror to see his new face. He just doesn’t intend to come back.

The nerves in his gut are building and building, and the only way Janus knows to calm them is by scheming. He can’t be passive like Virgil, reacting when he should be acting first. He has to make plans, to make things _right_ , and the current course of affairs is unacceptable.

As Anxiety, he can’t be stopped by Thomas’s scorn or disregard. He can _make_ him listen, even more so than Remus can, and play on the other Sides’ fears as easily as breathing. Virgil is too new of a Deceit to be able to suppress him, not when Janus knows how to mask his own lies, and Janus has had the Light Sides’ weaknesses memorized for ages.

The easiest way to make people get along is to give them a common enemy. The easiest way to make people do what you want is to make them _afraid_.

When Janus appears in the Dark Side commons and looks into the mirror, he isn’t surprised to find that his scales have gone pitch black.

He’s only surprised that his left eye, usually yellow, has done the same.

It looks more natural this way. Janus glances down at his yellow gloves until they darken as well, shifts his costume to black with hints of silver, and wonders why he ever ended up as Deceit in the first place.

Really, when he thinks about it… brute force seems so much _easier_. He can’t wait to see if that impression turns out to be true.


	4. day 11: thomas is a god and doesn't know it.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Thomas gets caught in the 2012 Battle of New York.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> for day 11: thomas is a god and doesn't know it.
> 
> TW's at end notes
> 
> Also, be warned: questionable characterization of an MCU character I don’t remember that well, complete lack of editing.

“Curious,” the man with the horned helmet said. “And what traitorous quim whelped your ancestors, I wonder?”

He tilted Thomas’s head back with the tip of his glowing spear; Thomas shook, clutching the crying baby closer to his chest, and babbled, “I only know up to my grandparents, so I— wouldn’t know?”

He didn’t know any of what this guy was talking about, really, but since whatever it was had caught the alien invader’s attention, he wasn’t too keen on it. His terror was blotting out coherent thought, Virgil vibrating with the need to _run or fight_ at his back; Thomas would have wondered hysterically how he’d gotten into this situation, but—

Okay, no, he knew how he’d gotten here. Broadway had lured him to New York like a moth to a gay flame, pun _not_ intended, and he’d only barely reached his hotel when a portal had cracked open the sky and poured out alien ships like a sprung leak. Things had gotten blurry from there.

He’d been running— Virgil had grabbed his bag when he’d dropped it, Logan listening observations almost too fast to process— and Patton had yanked his hoodie to stop him short, barely letting Thomas duck into an alley to avoid getting rounded up and taken prisoner like so many of the other pedestrians. Because there had been a _baby_ on the sidewalk, in a stroller with no parents around, and just down the street an enormous bioluminescent spaceship had been surging closer, blotting out the sky.

It hadn’t been a choice. Patton had gotten to her first, undoing the straps so Thomas could pull her free, but he hadn’t been the only one to notice the little girl’s wails. One of the aliens had turned and fired, skimming a line of sizzling fire across Thomas’s shoulder, and Thomas had screamed, Virgil screaming with him.

That had caught the leader’s attention. The man in the golden armor had looked down and stopped, something like surprise on his face, and Thomas had been cornered before he could recover enough to run.

Now he was trapped against a wall, Virgil growling at his back and the baby screaming displeasure, little face scrunched up in anguish. She was wearing a Minnie Mouse onesie. Thomas imagined it covered in blood, tiny baby clawed from his arms, tossed up and skewered like a piece of meat—

_Fuck you, Remus,_ he thought sickly, and the man in the helmet asked, nearly conversational, “Is the babe yours?”

Patton quivered, mumbling something too low to hear. Thomas felt the meaning— _don’t let him touch her he can’t he_ can’t— and swallowed against the point at his throat.

Hands on his shoulders, sold and comforting. “She’s my niece,” he said, Janus whispering _best not to make her useless_ into his ear, and the man quirked up an eyebrow.

“Is that so?” he said, amused. “Well. Set her aside, if you’re truly attached to her welfare. I find _you_ rather too offensive to leave alive, half-breed, but I’m not in the habit of killing helpless infants.”

Patton made a wounded sound, Janus’s grip tightening on Thomas’s shoulders, and Thomas asked, high, stalling for time, “What do you mean by half-breed?”

“That you have Asgardian blood,” said the alien, like it was at all obvious, “despite your status as Midgardian scum— and not even strength or command of _seidr_ to make up for it. It’s a shame, really. If you did have some use, if I’d found you earlier, you might have been an amusing distraction.” His eyes gleamed toxic blue. “As things stand, however, I really _can’t_ afford to make you any more of one. Terribly sorry about this.”

The fear swelled past coherent thought. “Wait,” Thomas begged, but the alien was already drawing back the spear, the length of it glowing electric and his soldiers hemming Thomas in on either end. Thomas jerked to shield the baby with his body, sob catching in his throat, wondering what would happen to his Sides if he died and if the _baby_ would even survive—

—and Virgil threw himself at the Asgardian with a desperate shriek.

Thomas _felt_ the blow hit. Virgil screamed, convulsing, and the man jerked back and stared at him in bald surprise.

Janus grabbed Thomas’s shoulder and snarled, “ _Run_ , you idiot!”

“But Virgil—“

“Will _come with you,”_ his Deceit snapped, pale and glaring.

The soldiers were distracted, moving forward to go after the new threat. Virgil was getting to his feet, snarling and bristling, looking for all the world like a spitting cat and horribly, desperately vulnerable, already surrounded.

The baby squirmed in Thomas’s arms. Patton sobbed, staring between him and Virgil with teary denial in his eyes, but they both knew which way the coin would fall. The Trolley Problem only had one right answer.

Thomas ran, forcing himself not to look back, and prayed that once he was far enough away, Virgil would spring back into place.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TW: intrusive thoughts of infant death, death threats, violence, open ending


	5. day 4: creativity doesn't understand what's wrong with him

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Two Creativities have a short conversation.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Confused by the character names? Well, uh, too bad.

“Why’s everyone acting so weird?” Creativity complained. Creativity shrugged and squinted at his canvas, dragging a dripping watercolor slash across the bare white. Technically the color was green, but because it was watercolors it’d turned into more of an Easter egg shade, like the crinkly plastic grass that Thomas’s mother put at the bottom of decorative baskets. Creativity liked to eat them whenever April came around. “Heart was crying,” Creativity continued, sounding put-out. 

“Heart’s always crying,” Creativity said tentatively. It made him uncomfortable, so he didn’t want to think about it, but it was true. Heart cried at nature documentaries. He cried when Thomas saw a snail. One time he’d cried because Thomas didn’t see a snail. “Mayhaps--“ That was a nice word, he was going to use that word more— “he’s distressed by something? Did Thomas see another dead bird?”

“I wish,” Creativity said. “Then Thomas could’ve eaten it! I bet it would’ve tasted really gross. Like blood and entrails and more blood.”

“You said blood twice," Creativity said, nose wrinkling.

“I like blood!"

Creativity scowled. “Well _I_ like not making other Sides cry,” he declared, throwing his paintbrush down with a huff. It bounced, splattering colored water all over his shirt; he glared at it, unspeakably betrayed, and Creativity grabbed it to chew on. “Your turn. I’m done with this.”

“Cool,” Creativity said, scrambling up beside him and shoving him off the stool. Creativity gasped in offense and kicked him, but Creativity only raised his middle finger— _horrible!_ Thomas’s parents said that was bad!— and took the paintbrush out of his mouth. Then he paused. “Hey, doesn’t being in two bodies now mean we can both paint?”

“But then which of us would watch?” Creativity asked, and Creativity blinked at him.

“We could watch each other,” he said, words quickening as the idea surged out, “and not look at our own canvases and think we’re doing super well but then when we look back we’ve drawn the faces of Death Itself, transversed through time and space to come out at our fingertips and damn us to Hell for all eternity!”

“It’s transaction,” Creativity corrected. “I think.”

“Transabdominal,” Creativity declared. “Learning used that word yesterday! It means covered in poop.”

Creativity frowned. “Did Learning say that?”

“I’m parasitizing.” Creativity flicked out his hand and drew a green line down Creativity’s face, forehead to chin and jagging crooked over his nose. Creativity spluttered and jumped backward, foam sword at the ready, and Creativity grinned at him. “I like this! Now we can fight for real without yelling at the mirror.”

“Now we each have two hands, which is better for carrying a sword and a shield!” Creativity cheered, striking a pose; he and Creativity had always fought over who got what and usually ended up dual-wielding, which sounded cool but wasn’t something knights did. 

“Dunno why everyone was so freaked out about it,” Creativity said, to Creativity’s firm if uneasy agreement, “but they’ll probably get over it. Now we’re even better than before.”

“Yeah!” Creativity said, even as the uncertainty swelled up within him, making him recall Heart’s tear-stricken expression and Learning’s pale face, Fear’s sniffling and Lying’s horrible stillness. “It’ll be fine. Things like this always have happy endings.”

Creativity didn’t answer him, too engrossed in painting the Wicked Witch of the West but entirely cubes. Creativity didn't like it; he fidgeted, clutching his sword, and tried not to wonder whether it would’ve been best to stay in one cramped body after all.


	6. Day 12: they are the light that keeps the monsters away

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Thomas is dead. It’s a long journey to the afterlife.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TW: major character death, spiders

“Hurry up,” Virgil whispered, tearing through another layer of misty gray cobwebs. “We don’t have long. If she senses us—“

“Will she sense us?”

“If she does, we won’t know until it’s too late and she’s eaten your soul,” Virgil promised. Thomas hated that it comforted him. “This is just the lowest layer. Once we’re past this, it’s Janus’s turn to get you through.”

Thomas swallowed his objection and nodded, ducking under the skeletal leg of the ancient, crumbling exoskeleton above them. Way, _way_ above them, farther than the dim light of his soul-body could see, he could make out the outlines of a gigantic pair of mandibles, the shell-shapes of eyesheathes that barely reflected light. The cave ceiling was higher yet, past the fog, long spindling stalactites stabbing through like wisdom teeth.

A Shelob’s graveyard. Flitting through the shadows, thin-limbed and light-stepped, Virgil seemed like just another trick Thomas’s mind was playing on him.

Which, well, he was, in a way. Thomas didn’t think the details mattered much anymore.

He clutched Anxiety’s hand tight and let himself be led.

Thomas didn’t remember dying. All he remembered was waking up in this dusty, scuttling cavern with Virgil’s hand over his mouth, eyes transmuted to black clusters above his cheeks. His Anxiety had been crouched over him like a black widow with its prey, joints all jagged corners and absorbing the light Thomas’s soul produced, gleaming soft and warm like the inside of an incubator. 

A black shadow against the colorless darkness, ragged and infinitely soothing. Thomas hadn’t so much as flinched. 

“We only have one chance at this,” Virgil had said, and he’d believed him without question.

Together, now, they crept across an open expanse of stone, past pools so clear they mirrored the ceiling and glistening layered formations that melted from the walls. Thomas never faltered, never felt his steps grow heavy enough to make a sound; Virgil was with him, striking fear through his heart like static shocks, letting them move as one. Two shadows, shifting under the maw of an enormous spider. Two flies, skirting the edge of an endless web.

Finally they reached a gap at the other end. Virgil pushed Thomas through, but he paused, turned, refused to budge; they were face-to-face, Virgil tense and nervous, when Thomas asked, “Virge, do you know what happens next? Will I see you again?”

“How should I know?” Virgil asked, mouth twisting. “I’m just a cog in this bizarre cosmic machine. I didn’t even know what I was supposed to do until we were here and I was doing it. Knowing things is _Logan’s_ job, not mine.”

“Was it?” Thomas asked helplessly, and Virgil’s expression softened. “Or were you guys always like this? Did I meet you too soon?”

“I can’t believe I’m the one telling you not to freak out here,” Virgil said, and Thomas huffed out a laugh, “but, I don’t know, maybe everyone carries their psychopomps with them. Maybe you could just see us sooner, in a way that hopefully didn’t fuck up your chances of getting into an afterlife.”

“Just what I needed to think about right now,” Thomas said, shaky, and Virgil snorted; then, because he had to know, Thomas asked, “Will I— see you again?” _Any of you,_ he wanted to ask, sorrow stealing up like a thief in the dark. _Logan’s straight edges, Patton’s nostalgic cheer? Roman’s exuberance, Remus’s cackling humor, Janus’s careful suspicion? You, with your rough edges and reluctant warmth?_

Virgil might have heard him, if they really were still one person. He pulled in his shoulders, worrying his lip; then he darted forward and kissed Thomas on the forehead, cheeks flushing dark behind his foundation, and said, “I have no fucking idea. But if I’m still around when you leave this room— if I don’t immediately get devoured by a giant spider as payment for letting you pass or whatever— I’ll try and find you, whatever it takes.” He gave a rueful smirk. “Never thought I’d say this, but I miss arguing with everyone as much as you do.”

“Fair enough,” Thomas said, voice breaking, and Virgil let go of him. “If I don’t see you again, though... bye, Virgil. I really love you.”

“L-love you too,” Virgil choked out, melting into the dark, and light assaulted Thomas’s eyes before he could say another word, death layers shifting like a moving maze.

An afterimage stayed, though, behind his eyelids like a sunspot: Virgil half-turned towards him, something like grief in his eyes, with two fingers cocked in a lazy salute.

Thomas kept his eyes closed and willed it not to fade.


	7. day 16: the light sides don’t remember, but the dark sides do

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Janus remembers, even if Patton doesn’t.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TW: vague flashback to illness

Janus was incredibly sick when they came; he remembers that much, through the haze of years. He was writhing in his bedsheets, nauseous and fevered, muscles aching so badly that he couldn’t stay on his feet.

Growing pains, of a sort. He was in the middle of the shift from lying to long-term self-preservation, and the change hurt. Tears streamed down his face, over the pockmarks where his scales were just growing in, symbols of selfishness that Thomas hadn’t really internalized before then. He fought against Virgil’s hold, against Remus’s, screamed out at their cold and grimy hands.

He made Virgil cry. He remembers that, too, for the awkward guilt he felt afterwards. No one could get near him, and the sickness grew worse and worse, eating him alive—

And Virgil and Remus came back with three new voices, only a hair’s breadth from strangers’.

And a sweet, concerned voice asked what was wrong, and how they could help.

The Light Sides didn’t know what they were doing. They were small, too, Roman uncomfortable around his brother and Patton tentative for the same reason, Logan determinedly taking temperatures and copying whatever Thomas’s parents did for _him_.

Patton plied Janus with chicken noodle soup. Roman conjured entertainments to distract him, showers of golden lights and half-remembered depictions of unicorns and knights. Logan summoned medicine, Virgil and Remus coaxing Janus in their respective ways to accept it.

The other Sides stayed for three days, until Janus was on his feet; then they parted again to their own halves of the Mindscape, filing back to the ways they’d been categorized for years.

The Light Sides seemed to forget completely.

Janus never did, and he suspects Virgil and Remus didn’t, either.

“I can’t recall,” he finally answers Patton, warm and false. “ _Were_ you a cute child? I suspect, given your demeanor now, that you were tooth-rottingly adorable.”

“I don’t know if you meant that _demeaningly_ ,” Patton says with a grin, “but I like to think I was, so I’m gonna take that as a compliment.” He pauses, smile going shyer. “I’m sure you were really cute, too.”

“Flatterer,” Janus says, smirking, and doesn’t bother to bring up how he should _know_.


End file.
